Miscellanies

Yet another sermon jam coming out on 10:31’s forthcoming volume. This one by Josh Harris, Senior Pastor of Covenant Life Church (Gaithersburg, MD), is called, Contradictions:

“There are two options for mankind. There are two options for each and every one of us. We can choose human wisdom or we can choose God’s wisdom – the wisdom of the Cross. But they don’t fit together. They can’t be made compatible. They are incompatible. God’s Cross wisdom contradicts human wisdom. The human race is divided into two groups. That’s how Paul sees all of mankind. It’s not about gender, it’s not about age, it’s not about wealth, it’s not about education, for Paul. No. He says the world is divided right down the middle and the dividing factor is what people think of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Your perspective of that even is the most important thing about you. It’s the defining thing about you. And Paul shows that the wisdom of the world (human wisdom) completely disagrees and contradicts God’s wisdom (the wisdom of the Cross). The Corinthians wanted to mix-and-match human wisdom and Cross wisdom. Paul says, ‘No, it doesn’t work. They contradict.’ No matter what the race or the culture, the message of the Cross is always folly and offense to natural, sinful man. …. This is no small difference of opinion on a minor topic. No. This is absolute contradiction on the central issue.”

See 1 Corinthians 1-3

Our friends over at 10:31 Sermon Jams are getting ready to launch a new and improved Website next week and with it comes the release of their 4th volume of sermon jams. And they keep getting better! Over the coming days at TSS we’ll be giving you some exclusive access to songs from the new volume.

This first one, War, comes from John Piper’s sermon on Romans 8:10-17 (his ministry will always be equated in my mind with thunder):

“I hear so many Christians murmuring about their imperfections and their failures and their addictions and their short-comings, And I see so little war! ‘Murmur, murmur, murmur… Why am I this way?’ MAKE WAR!”

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Ed Welch: “There is a mean streak to authentic self-control. Self-control is not for the timid. When we want to grow in it, not only do we nurture an exuberance for Jesus Christ, we also demand of ourselves a hatred for sin. The only possible attitude toward out-of-control desire is a declaration of all-out war. There is something about war that sharpens the senses. You hear a twig snap or the rustling of leaves and you are in attack mode. Someone coughs and you are ready to pull the trigger. Even after days of little or no sleep, war keeps us vigilant.”

I love sermon jams, the place where sermonic highlight meets background music. Sermon jams are excellent for the gym, excellent for personal devotion, excellent to share with other listeners less likely to listen to entire sermons, and overall just an excellent way to reach the lost and share the faith. Sermon jams are very common online, but few are as well constructed as those produced by 10:31 Sermon Jams. Many of their jams are available online for free download.

My interest was especially peaked when I heard the newest CD release would include a jam of my favorite preacher, Rick Gamache (pastor of Sovereign Grace Fellowship in Bloomington, MN)! No one has more personally and profoundly influenced my life in turning my gaze back to the Cross than Gamache and this sermon jam encapsulates his ministry so beautifully. Have a listen for yourself …

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Audio posted with the kind permission of 10:31 Sermon Jams. Special thanks to Bryan Guenther.

Now that all the Sovereign Grace Ministries messages are free, I’m slowly feasting message-by-message in a long and delicious buffet of audio. Today I finally arrived at Dave Harvey’s message from the SGM Leadership Conference this Spring (at the time, I was on the other side of the wall listening to Dever speak on his annual reading schedule).

Harvey, the author of the excellent book When Sinners Say I Do: Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage (Shepherd’s Press: 2007), is also an expert church planter and apostolic leader within SGF. This Spring in his session “Watch Your Mission: To Be, or Not to Be, ‘Missional,’” he assessed the strengths and weakness of the missional movement. In part, he argues the MM muddies the Cross-centered focus of the Church and misunderstands the apostolic context of the Great Commission.

Here’s the heart of his outline:

1. What are the Strengths of Missional Churches?
A. Missional Churches Have a Commendable Passion for Evangelism.
B. Missional Churches Have a Laudable Commitment to Engaging Culture.
C. Missional Churches Have a Profitable Impulse for Reexamining Church Tradition.
D. They Also Possess an Admirable Devotion to Social Impact.

2. What are the Weaknesses of Missional Churches?
A. Missional Churches Tend to Be Mission-Centered Rather Than Gospel-Centered.
B. Missional Churches Tend to Have a Reductionistic Ecclesiology.
C. Missional Churches Tend to Confuse Culture Engagement with Cultural Immersion.
D. Missional Churches Tend to Downplay the Institutional and Organizational Nature of the Church.
E. Missional Churches Tend to Have an Insufficient Understanding of Apostolic Ministry.

Free: Get the full outline here and the mp3 audio here.

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Update: It should be noted SGM believes in a continuing apostolic gift: “present-day apostles plant and build local churches for the sanctification of the believer, the expansion of the mission, and the exaltation of God.” For more on why they use the term, what it means and does not mean, see the SGM booklet by Harvey titled Polity: Serving and Leading the Local Church (2004), pages 17-26, 49-50.

Mars Hill Church audio has released a number of songs for download. Access these songs and watch for additions through the feed here. Some examples of what you will find:

Come Ye Sinners

Nothing but the Blood

Destructor

How Great Thou Art

I’ll Fly Away

An interview from May 28 promoting his new book The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception (Thomas Nelson: 2007).

Related: Don Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications (Zondervan: 2005).

Related: R. Scott Smith, Truth and the New Kind of Christian: The Emerging Effects of Postmodernism in the Church (Crossway: 2005).

Terminating the Gospel on God
by Tony Reinke

Lord willing, if the 16-inches of snow expected in the Twin Cities holds off until tonight, I’ll be headed to the North Woods with some dear Christian brothers. It will be a weekend of fires, food, hiking, snowmobiles and (hopefully) millions of stars and the Northern lights. So a short post before I pack my hatchet, matches and camera.

Even coming into 2007, I eagerly anticipated that God would teach me many new things about communion with Himself. I cannot wait to finally get a copy of Kelly Kapic’s soon-to-be released, Communion with God: The Divine and the Human in the Theology of John Owen (Baker). And later this Winter Justin Taylor and Kapic will release Owen’s Communion with God in the same format as Overcoming Sin and Temptation last year (Crossway). Folks like myself are being stretched to capture the Puritan idea that our union with God drives our communion with Him. Discovering many contours of communion with God is my anticipation for 2007.

In The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer explained the danger of terminating on justification and thinking that union with God is the end of all things. Tozer writes, “We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him” (16). And earlier, “To have found God and still to pursue Him is the Soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too easily satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart” (14).

Recently another very helpful contour in this discovery came a quote from John Piper last Sunday at the Resolved conference in California. Here is the excerpt that grabbed my attention:

“I want God. Forgiveness just gets stuff out of the way between me and God. Forgiveness has value for one reason – it brings me to God reconciled. That’s what I want pastors to get to. I don’t want you to stop at justification. I don’t want you to stop at forgiveness. I don’t want you to stop at eternal life. I want you to push though all of those because the Bible does … ‘We rejoice in God through Jesus Christ, through whom we have received reconciliation’ (Rom. 5:11). But the point is we finally have gotten to the end and ‘we rejoice in God.’ Reconciliation is a means to the end of making God the Gospel! … We get out of the way everything that is an obstacle to enjoying God when we are forgiven. Take justification: ‘Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God’ (Rom. 5:1-2). That’s the point of justification. Who cares if we’re righteous? Do you want to be God? Is that why you want to be righteous? You want to boast in your righteousness? Why do you want to be righteous? … Because when you get righteousness you get God! You don’t get put in hell — you get God! … All the things we usually terminate on when we preach the Gospel we terminate one step early. We need in America a great awakening of radical God-centeredness … We need millions and millions of believers that are so oriented on ‘God as the Gospel’ they break through forgiveness to God, and through justification to God, and through reconciliation to God, and through eternal life to God.”

- John Piper, “God is the Gospel”, sermon (2007.02.1 39:53-43:25

The warning that Piper and Tozer sound is a warning not to be a “too easily satisfied religionist.” We need to see that God, not justification, is the heart of the Gospel. I love books, and I love doctrine, and I love Calvinism, and I love the message of a God who covers sinners with His Own righteousness. I love these things! But all doctrines are intended to push us deeper into a relationship with Himself. Tozer was right when he wrote, “God waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain” (17).

But reading books, biographies and diaries of men who followed hard after God is not communion. Spurgeon’s words challenge me here:

“My soul – never be satisfied with a shadowy Christ. … I cannot know Christ through another person’s brains. I cannot love him with another man’s heart, and I cannot see him with another man’s eyes. … I am so afraid of living in a second-hand religion. God forbid that I should get a biographical experience. Lord save us from having borrowed communion. No, I must know him myself. O God, let me not be deceived in this. I must know him without fancy or proxy; I must know him on my own account.”

To personally rejoice in God is the goal of the Gospel. Owen, Tozer, Piper and Spurgeon remind us that our spiritual vision is too small. We seek 15-minutes of prayer time when we should be asking to see more of God’s glory (Ex. 33:18), panting for more of Him (Ps. 42:1-2) and clinging tightly to Him (Ps. 63:8). That is communion.

So let the Gospel and Calvinism and all bible study and theology terminate in personal communion with Him. If we do, we’ll begin to understand what the Gospel is really all about.